Politics of youth survival in times of crisis
Annisa R. BETA
ABSTRACT
This essay discusses the discursive shift in the idealized youth citizenship in Indonesia and recent instances that demonstrate the state’s ambivalent treatments of its youth as exemplified with the millennial aides and the government’s lack of support to its young labour force during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. I propose that the pandemic has further established uncertainty and insecurity as the “normal” in young people’s lives. This essay looks into the “politics of survival” imposed on Indonesian youth and discusses the multiple, ongoing, and developing crises that reveal the imaginations of the state and its governance of the ideal youth citizen.
KEYWORDS: Youth citizenship; Indonesia; politics of survival; COVID-19
Notes on contributor
Annisa R. Beta is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the School of Culture and Communication, the University of Melbourne. Her research is broadly concerned with youth, new media, and political subjectivity in Southeast Asia.